Doctor Psychodelectric Going Home Lyrics Video Story

Doctor Psychodelectric Going Home is a tale of hard core escapism into the world of hard core psychedelics and psychotropic substance abuse. It was written to portray the very deep and very frightening emotions of fear, anxiety, despair, self doubt, self abasement, and self loathing… the clawing of the thin ice of sanity.

This is really two songs: Doctor Psychodelectric, and Going Home. They are listed on the album as one song, Doctor Psychodelectric – Going Home. They are considered a single composition because there is no real end of one and beginning of the next. There is a Segway between the two songs where musically Going Home literally “escapes” or “breaks out” of Doctor Psychodelectric.

After Sarah left, after my final goodbye with her over the phone, I did what every red blooded broken hearted human being does: I tried to drown out the psychosis of complete and utter failure with something artificial.

For some, this would be alcohol. For others, it might be food. For others, it might be religion. And yet others, they may sink into a deep depression and end the pain with self immolation. Suicide. For me, it was heavy partying, and in particular, LSD and Pot. And ‘shrooms. And Peyote. With lots of pot smoking in between. I wasn’t much of a drinker but I did start to drink a lot more too.

I found a park where all the local druggies hung out at night – I was invited there actually by my friend from work – Lester – who had hooked me up with the “what-if-we-gave-my-parents-these-shrooms-in-a-salad” mushrooms that I believe caused the emotional tipping point that sent Sarah back home to her parents. Lester was a cool guy and a good friend and he kept in touch after I left the company. He invited me to come to the park one night so I grabbed my acoustic guitar and went there. I sat on a picnic table and played some tunes for the group and met Lisa. Lisa and I became lovers and I met a lot of friends through her. My apartment quickly became “the party pad” and all kinds of people were in and out of there. It was on. In Talkin’ ’bout California I mentioned “the party never ends” and that’s exactly what I created. It was crazy. I honestly don’t know how we didn’t get busted, but that’s probably because almost everybody in the building of 8 apartments were also at my nightly parties.

I was always a partier, and a pretty heavy partier at that. But this was something else. Ever see Breaking Bad, in the scenes where Jesse had all the crazy meth-heads in his home tearing up the place? It was almost as crazy as that some times. People were dropping acid, eating shrooms, smoking hash, smoking weed, we had bongs, we had hash on a needle under glass, we had rolling papers soaked in hash oil… it was exactly what this song is talking about in the first lyrics:

I need something to help me get through
I need something to help me forget
I need a powerful mind-blowing stimulant
I need the doctor of electric psychedelics
I need the doctor with the key to my dreams
’cause the doctor of love ain’t available, see
I need the doctor of twisted reality
to unlock my door of psychic totality

I was obviously trying to crush the pain with self-medication. I did not want to think about the pain, the loneliness, the loss… I just wanted to forget. I always thought of LSD as “turning on the electricity” in my brain. I attribute it to unlocking the doors of perception in my mind and waking me up intellectually. I wrote better music, better and deeper lyrics, and generally got deeply in touch with my creative source after experiencing LSD. I believed I could reprogram myself and unlock my hidden dreams and abilities with it. I started getting into it very often.

A short time after Sarah left and I quit the company I was working for when we were together, I got a job almost immediately working for a hydraulics company about 30 minutes drive from my apartment. This was one of the best jobs I have ever had and it carried with it the promise of a huge career. But because of all the partying, eventually, since I was unable to maintain my attendance properly, I lost the job and then I lost the apartment and had to move out some time just before Christmas. I also lost all of my friends because, as most people with extremely low self esteem do, I sabotaged my friendships and alienated my friends. I hated myself and did not deserve them. I ended up moving to a roach infested room over a Mexican takeout place right on the strand in Hermosa Beach. I mean, right on the water, one block from the pier. The perfect place to really go over the edge.

It didn’t take long for me to find the connections I needed to continue experimenting with psychedelics and I made some friends – acquaintances really who only wanted to know you if you had “something to share”. For me, I always managed to have some weed to share so I was let into the inner circle of “the decadent sheik” crowd in Hermosa Beach. These were people that you would assume are homeless by looking at them, but they owned half million dollar homes on the strand and apparently did not work for a living. Once in a while I’d score a sheet of acid and share it with my friends and we’d have some serious “solve all of the worlds problems” gatherings.

During one of these really serious trips, the morning after an all nighter, I was sitting in the living room of a friends apartment right on the beach, looking out through a picture window at a man on a roof doing roofing work. He was wearing no shirt and had an over-the-shoulder tool belt on. I could see him as if I was looking through a telescope. I could see the buckle of his tool belt. I could see his glasses. But he was about 15 yards away. A tiny spec of pink in the far distance. I wear glasses for distance vision (since 5th grade) and I had no glasses at the time. I should not have been able to see this at all. But I did. With greater than 20-20 perfection. Which prompted the line: give me telescopic vision.

I was going – well, insane from grief. I was masking my pain with drugs. The madness of the acid trip was a welcome reprieve from the pain I was feeling (and would continue to feel for many years). I was trying to use this escapism to break me out of my prison of guilt and derision. But it wasn’t working.

Gonna go insane
Wanna walk in the rain
With nothing to gain
Wanna feel no pain

With the rainy season in January, I found myself literally going insane with loneliness and grief. I walked in the rain on “the strand” from Hermosa Beach to Manhattan Beach all the time. I was looking for that connection that I lost with every pair of eyes that I made contact with. My beautiful, bright, happy soul was gone. There are so many songs that have existed that speak to my condition. “people are strange when you’re a stranger, faces look ugly when you’re alone” (the doors) and “you’re in every bar, you’re in every café, you’re driving every car, I see you every day” (the kinks) – actually that entire song (no more looking back) pretty much sums up how I felt for the next five years. I literally would look in every car, in every window, at every person I passed, looking for her. Looking for the light that was snuffed out.

Nothing to gain? I remember walking out onto the pier at night and sat on the rail where a bunch of homeless guys were burning wood in a barrel. I was playing my guitar. One of them came up to me, grabbed me by the lapel, and pushed me over the rail, but held on so I didn’t actually fall. I was just suspended there nearly horizontally – all he had to do was let go and I’d fall into the waves crashing into the huge posts that held up the pier. He leaned over and said “I could kill you and take that guitar”. I looked at him with a dead-pan stare. I had no fear. I didn’t care. For a moment I saw him as my savior from the pain. I told him, “go ahead you’d be doing me a favor”. He pulled me back up and laughed. He kept saying stuff like “You’re alright, man, you’re alright. You can come hang out with us any time.” I think I made him nervous because I lacked even the slightest inkling of fear.

I was metamorphosing. Slowly. Steadily. Into a state of mind that could not cope with the pain of my loss. Please keep in mind that Sarah did not die. I did not get that kind of closure. If she died, I could have just moved on. But she didn’t die. She disappeared. Our bond was broken. My soul felt torn from me. My light went out. But she was still out there somewhere. Not dead. It wasn’t really over.

Insanity sets in like mental metamorphosis
I live and exist in my emotional state
I have a psychedelic shield to obscure my state

So as the insanity set in, I began to live and exist in this emotional state of turmoil and despair, obscured artificially and chemically.

Emotional pain sets in and becomes the enemy I shield
My psychedelic world becomes real

And as the emotional pain set in, became permanent, I was locked in such a battle against it that my use of chemical self medication became a permanent state, and it largely became my reality. The next part of the song was carefully written to depict the surreal cacophony of the insanity blasting like a blow-torch through my head. Somewhere in there, after a bout of insane laughter, you begin to hear a series of “no, no, no” rising into an insane scream.

The chorus repeats itself with the exception of the last line:

Set me out of my prison of cataclysmic derision

And that’s really what it became to me. A cataclysm. I couldn’t take it anymore and I imploded. When the song Segway’s into Part 2: Going Home, you can hear the screams of “let me out of here” pushing, shoving, clawing and scratching, as the music from Part 2 starts to sound like it’s literally trying to break out of the madness. Then the madness ends. I left California and went home.

My life what a mess
I’m falling apart I need rest
Too many substitutes, too much confusion
I’m forgetting the reason for the things I’ve been doing

And it was true. My life was a mess. I was falling apart. I was substituting happiness for chemicals, love for sex, friendship for acquaintances that were only there for me when I could “smoke them up”. I was so deeply into my self medicated state that I could no longer see the reason for it. It was failing to give me that artificial happiness.

Can’t take the pressure this time
I’m going home to unwind
I can get love from my family
Oh land of sun farewell to thee
Oh land of sun I have to leave
I’m going home to get some peace

I called my parents and told them I was coming home. I sold my car for $100 and purchased a bus ticket for $97.

Don’t have no food – don’t have no job
Starving for love – riddled with doubt
Failure I am don’t pity me
Don’t deserve what I’ve gotten – hope some day I’ll be free

And I was really starving both physically and emotionally. For a few weeks I was living on a single peanut butter and jelly sandwich every other day. I lost so much weight. I was emotionally starved, riddle with self doubt, saw myself as a failure… yet still did not want pity. I just went home to start over, which I did, and began rebuilding my life. When I arrived there after three days on the bus with no food, I weighed 127 pounds.

To this day, over 30 years later, I still suffer from self doubt and self debasement. It’s not easy to get over some things, especially when you truly believe that your great fall is of your own making. It would take years to find out it wasn’t true, but the scars of those days were so deep they never totally went away.

Doctor Psychodelectric Going Home (Lyrics)
by Jerry Boutot

Part 1: Doctor Psychodelectric

I need something to help me get through
I need something to help me forget
I need a powerful mind-blowing stimulant
I need the doctor of electric psychedelics
I need the doctor with the key to my dreams
’cause the doctor of love ain’t available, see
I need the doctor of twisted reality
To unlock my door of psychic totality

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